Canadian rookie Lance Stroll set to make his Formula One debut

Share

When he's alone on the starting grid at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, Lance Stroll will divert from his usual routine.

For most of his career, the 18-year-old from Montreal, who is making his Formula One debut at the Australian Grand Prix, has followed the same prerace ritual.

With his helmet on and the motor rumbling, Stroll usually takes a second to breathe deeply and say a few words to himself: I know I'm ready. I know I'm fast.

It's a confidence exercise he adopted long ago under the tutelage of a sports psychologist when Stroll, at age of 11, began working his way up the racing ranks as a GoKart driver in Quebec.

Dubbed a prodigy from an early age, and often racing against older drivers, the words helped calm any last-minute nerves.

After dominating Formula 3, one of racing's top minor circuits, last year, Stroll will become the first Canadian to race in F1 since Jacques Villeneuve in 2006 – not to mention the youngest driver in Sunday's field.

And even though the butterflies come far less frequently now that he's emerged as one of auto racing's top prospects, Stroll says this time he'll skip those same verbal cues. That's because he is treating his first race, and perhaps his entire debut season, as a learning exercise.

"I try and always find a couple of key words, like a couple of 'I know this, or I know that' sentences," he says. "But the reality is, it's my first race in F1, and there's not much that I know."

As learning experiences go, Stroll's entry into the sport's most glamorous echelon will be among the most pressure-filled imaginable.

Fresh off his F3 title last year, he was unveiled in November as the new hope for British-based Williams Racing, just a few days after his 18th birthday.

With less than five months to prepare, and only a few days allowed under F1 regulations to get to know the car he will be driving in Melbourne, Stroll's preparation for this season has been a race of its own. Even though he won 14 of his 30 races in claiming the F3 championship last year, Stroll knows that counts for little in F1.

"It's a fresh start now. But it's exciting," Stroll said from Melbourne this week, where he was walking the track, as drivers often do a few days before competition to get the lay of the land. "It's new, and I've got to build up to it again."

There will be much to get used to: The races are longer, the cars are faster and the talent is more experienced and aggressive. Last year's Australian GP was won by 31-year-old Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg in just more than 1 hour 48 minutes, making it three times longer than most F3 races Stroll competed in last year. Meanwhile, the cars hit top speeds of more than 360 kilometres an hour, nearly 100 km/h faster than the cars in F3. Changes to the cars this year, including wider tires, have made them faster still, increasing the G-forces that will pull at drivers and make the latter stages of a race even more tiring.

To prepare, Stroll has spent the past several months training on F1 tracks using the Williams 2014 car. It's not a perfect proxy for what he'll experience on Sunday, but it has helped the initiation process.

"For me especially, being a rookie, there's so much to learn and to understand behind the wheel," Stroll said. "Things are coming at you quicker, so braking distance is shorter, and the corner is coming at you quicker."

But with the new car specifications, Stroll adds, "It's challenging for everyone."

Only Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, who made his debut last season still six months shy of his 18th birthday, can claim an earlier F1 introduction. In a sport that is increasingly getting younger, turning to drivers who are groomed from a young age to be sophisticated tacticians by the time they hit their late teens, Verstappen surprised critics of the youth movement when he won the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.

Stroll comes into this season with a lot to prove, and must hush the naysayers who have questioned him throughout his career, saying he is only afforded opportunity in racing because his father, Lawrence, is a billionaire.

It's a challenge he knows he must address at every level, and one that can only be answered with strong performances on the track. The reality of racing, though, is that it is a sport that requires huge sums of money, and there are virtually no drivers in F1 who don't come with significant financial backing.

Lawrence Stroll, who made his money bankrolling the likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors in the fashion world, is estimated to be worth billions. When Lance was recruited at 11 to race with the Ferrari Driver Academy, which develops young talent, his entry into that program is said to have cost millions. Meanwhile, his climb up the ranks into F3, and ultimately into a spot at Williams, is estimated to carry a price tag in the tens of millions.

But the Ferrari talent scout who discovered Lance as a boy and helped recruit him to the program said Stroll's results on the track show he is an unusual talent.

"Good drivers are good drivers, and special drivers are special drivers," said Eric Jensen, a racing veteran who is now a consultant for Ferrari, and is based in Toronto. "Lance has shown signs that he's a special driver. You don't have the results he had in Formula 3 last year without being a special driver."

Jensen will be tuning in Sunday to see how the talent he spotted at a young age can handle the sport's biggest stage. The gruelling races in F1 will be Stroll's toughest challenge, he says.

"He's going to be pretty tired, so can he handle that? What ends up happening driving a race car is as your body gets tired, then your mind starts making mistakes," Jensen says. "And the general public doesn't understand how on-the-limit you are. Every corner you're risking your life, because if you make a small mistake you can crash at 150 miles per hour, and then you're on God's goodwill if you're fine or not. It's amazing, Formula One. These guys do it at a consistently high level for two hours without making mistakes."

When Stroll jumped to Williams last year, it was because the team was offering a faster route into F1 than Ferrari could. How success will be defined for Stroll this season is an open question though. Williams dominated the circuit in the 1980s and 90s but is now a mid-ranking team, finishing fifth last year.

While winning a race, as Verstappen did, would be ideal, Stroll's job at Williams will be to accumulate as many points for the team as he can, even if he never sees the podium, since prize money in F1 dictates the budget for the following season. "I don't want to think results, I don't want to think positions. I just want to come in, do my job, and we'll see where we end up," Stroll said.

Stroll's first training run at Williams got off to a bumpy start a few weeks ago when he missed a turn and went off the track, damaging his car in the process. For the most part, though, Stroll shrugged it off as something that comes with the territory – all part of having to make a debut under a spotlight. His first season in F3 began under a similar cloud when he was involved in two crashes, including one that flipped his car, and earned a one-race penalty, along with the ire of more experienced drivers. Stroll called it "probably the worst possible point of my career."

But the learning experiences of the first season gave way to the F3 championship in his second season. It's a development path he hopes to duplicate now, even if it takes longer at the highest level.

"There's so many things that need to come together to get good results and it's better to just focus on the process of getting there than just focusing on the result," Stroll said.

Though Lawrence Stroll is a fixture at the track when his son races, he said he'll be mostly trying to stay out of Lance's way in advance of Sunday's race. For father and son, there is no prerace routine.

"I let him do his own thing. I'm his dad, he has enough professionals, his engineers, etc., giving him all the advice he needs," Lawrence said. "The last thing he needs is more advice from me."